For Claire Smith, 'Just Going To Work' Inspired A Generation Of Women In Sports Journalism

Claire Smith, left, with Michelle M. Murphy, executive director for the Malta House of Care Foundation, which honored Smith in May 2017. Smith, who blazed trails as a sports journalist, will receive the Franciscan Life Center's St. Claire Award in Southington onTuesday. (Amy Ellis/Hartford Courant)

For more than 30 years, Claire Smith has fostered a simple, but powerful ambition.

“I just wanted to go to work every day,” she explained. “I never thought of the long-term consequences or what might be said at the end of three and a half decades.”

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She did just that, of course. No obstacle stopped her. And Smith, who was presented the J.G. Taylor Spink Award for meritorious contributions to baseball by members of the Baseball Writers Association of America at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown last summer, paved a path for women and African-Americans to enter sports journalism, and follow their dreams.

“We get up and we go to work because it’s a career we love to do and we have a passion for the work, the digging, the journalism,” said Smith, who began breaking barriers as the Courant’s Yankees beat reporter and national baseball columnist in the 1980s, and went on to work for the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and now ESPN. “So it was really humbling to look at it through the eyes of other people.”

Smith, who lives in Ellington, will be among the honorees at the Franciscan Life Center’s annual sports banquet and auction Tuesday night at the Aqua Turf Club in Southington. She will receive the St. Claire Award. Rece Davis of ESPN will receive the St. Francis Award; Joe D’Ambrosio, his 26-year run as voice of UConn basketball and football ending, will receive the Arnold Dean “Dean of Sports” Award; Bernie Schilberg, CEO of Prime Materials Recovery, will receive the Jim Calhoun Community Service Award; and John Salerno and Betsy Tooker of Tops Marketplace the Mother Shaun Appreciation Award. Connecticut Special Olympics athletes will also be honored. Al and Tony Terzi serve as masters of ceremonies.

“I took a tour of the Life Center [in Meriden] and what an impressive place,” Smith said. “You could feel the spirituality of it. ... I have always admired the work of selfless people, people who do these things for folks who are hurting. That’s the mission there.”

While covering the 1984 National League Championship Series for the Courant, Smith was run out of the Padres’ clubhouse by players who objected to the presence of a woman. Steve Garvey came out to talk to Smith and make sure she got everything she needed to complete her assignment, and with his support, and that of commissioner Peter Ueberroth, Smith was soon back on the job and in the clubhouse.

As one of a small group of courageous, persistent women covering sports at the time, Smith’s willingness to stand her ground proved an inspiration to a generation of women who later became baseball writers, many of whom were in Cooperstown to share the weekend with Smith last July and hear her moving speech at Doubleday Field. She was the first woman to receive the Spink Award in its 55-year history.

If you let irrational, cruel acts get to you, you’re not going to make it in this day and age.

Claire Smith

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“You can legislate away the legal barriers or corporate barriers that teams put up barring women,” Smith said. “You can’t legislate away ignorance or cruelty. When you see it, I encourage people to concentrate on the reactions of teammates and management who now automatically spring to the defense of what is right. … If you let irrational, cruel acts get to you, you’re not going to make it in this day and age, even with the support systems built in. You have to be tough, and you have to realize that it’s not perfect, but it ‘ain’t what it used to be.’”

The banquet and auction recognizes community service and benefits the Franciscan Life Center’s work, including its home care and hospice care programs. Tickets are $65 for adults, $30 for children under 12. The silent auction begins at 5:30 p.m., dinner at 6:30. For reservations or more information, call 203-237-8084 or visitwww.flcenter.org or www.franciscanhc.org.